After the capitulation of Turkey, Austria-Hungary, and Germany in October and November 1918, the Allied forces in Russia openly proclaimed their anti-Bolshevik (not merely anti-German) aims. As before, however, they were unable to develop a unified strategy. Frequently the various Allied powers pursued contradictory policies. France and England, for example, expressed a desire to help General Denikin but at the same time supported nationalist movements in the Ukraine and the Caucasus opposed by Denikin. In May 1919 the Allied Supreme Council promised aid to Admiral Kolchak on the condition that "the Allied Governments will have proofs that they are really helping the Russian people to achieve freedom, self- government, and peace." The Allies demanded that Kolchak convene a Constituent Assembly, restore a republic rather than a monarchy, and guarantee independence for Poland and Finland and autonomy for the Baltic states, the Caucasus, and the Trans-Caspian territory. Meanwhile, one of the Allied powers, Japan, refused to aid Kolchak and supported, instead, its own prot6g6s, the Cossack atamans Semenov and Kalmykov.
Churchill, British war minister, strongly supported intervention, while Lloyd George, British premier, repeatedly sought to come to terms with the Soviet government. The British military representatives inside Russia opposed the policies of both ministers and were, in turn, condemned by British public opinion. French policy was equally hesitant and ambivalent. Besides all this, the Allied powers competed with one another in pursuit of spheres of influence on Russian territory, each placing its own self- interest above the common cause.
The fighting capacity of the Allied troops sent to Russia was extremely low. Having survived the terrible battles of the world war, they did not wish to die in a strange land. Antimilitarist sentiment spread throughout Europe and, especially in the defeated countries, contributed to revolutionary outbreaks—in Germany, Austria, and Hungary in particular. Bolshevik slogans fell on fertile ground in France, Britain, and the United States as well.
Fears that the Allied troops in Russia might become demoralized and refuse to fight contributed to their evacuation. On September 27, 1919, the Allies withdrew from Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. The evacuation of Siberia began at about the same time. Only the Japanese remained, hoping to keep their bases in the Russian Far East. In August 1919 the British completed their withdrawal from Central Asia. They left the Caucasus at the same time, except for Batum, which they held until March 1921. (Under the Brest-Litovsk treaty, it was supposed to be returned to Turkey.) From Batum they watched the Red Army invade Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, areas the British had evacuated on the grounds that "the situation in the Caucasian republics had been stabilized." French intervention was equally ineffective. On December 17 and 18, 1918, a French naval squadron landed units of the French Eastern Army in Odessa, approximately 45,000 strong. They occupied areas around Tiraspol, Nikolaev, and Kherson. After four months of idleness they were hastily evacuated on April 5 and 6, 1919.
The nations of the Entente gave the White armies substantial aid in the form of money, arms, and supplies. However, the presence of foreign troops on the territory of the former Russian empire in support of those who advocated a "Russia one and indivisible" gave a formidable weapon to the Soviet propagandists. It allowed the Bolsheviks to pose as defenders of the country's national interests.
In fact, the number of foreigners fighting on the side of the Red Army greatly exceeded the number of foreign "interventionists." Until the fall of 1918, Latvian, Polish, Chinese, Czech, and Finnish "internationalists," who as a rule were experienced soldiers, constituted the main fighting forces of the growing Red Army. In the fall of 1918 their number exceeded 50,000. By the summer of 1920, the international units numbered nearly 250,000.121 The international units were among the most self-sacrificing of the Red forces; their members were inspired by the concept that their only land was the land of the soviets. The foreigners who served in the Red Army were called internationalists, rather than interventionists, to suggest that they were the incarnation of a progressive idea and consequently had the historical right to fight alongside the Bolsheviks. This form of intervention was euphemistically called "fraternal aid in building a new world."
"GIVE US WARSAW"
In a history of the civil war the Polish—Soviet war of 1920 requires separate consideration. Soviet historians nevertheless continue to describe it as "the third campaign of the Entente" against the Soviet Republic.
Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish national poet, told of a prophetic vision in which he saw an independent Poland reborn out of the collapse of the three empires which had partitioned his land. The prophecy came true in 1917—1918: however the resurrected nation soon came into conflict with the hereditary enemy on its eastern border. Clashes between Polish and Soviet troops began in early 1919, in areas of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Lithuania. In August 1919 the Polish army took advantage of the weakness of the Soviet forces engaged on the fronts of the civil war to establish a battle line extending from Vilna through Minsk to Lvov. Secret negotiations then began between the governments of Lenin and Pilsudski.
The first meeting between Moscow's envoy, the Polish Communist Julian Marchlewski, and Warsaw's representatives took place on October 11, the day that Denikin's army reached Orel, its point of farthest advance toward Moscow. The White forces took Orel on October 13. Pilsudski's representative told Marchlewski that the Poles were not interested in helping Denikin and therefore had not attacked Mozyr. Such an attack, coinciding with Denikin's offensive at Orel, could have shattered the entire southern front of the Red Army. As conditions for an armistice, Pilsudski proposed recognition of the existing battle line as the Polish—Soviet border, an end to Communist agitation in the Polish army, and an end to Soviet military operations against Petlyura.122 With the exception of the last point, Lenin agreed. But on December 14 Marchlewski returned to Moscow and the talks were broken off. By then Orel had been retaken by the Red Army, Moscow was no longer threatened, and Denikin was in retreat.
Jozef Pilsudski, who assumed the leadership of the Polish state in November 1918, had for many years been a socialist, but as he put it, he got off the socialist train at the stop marked "independence." The leaders of the White armies were strong advocates of a "Russia one and indivisible," and did nothing to calm Polish fears about their future in the event of victory. In June 1919 Kolchak deeply offended the Poles by announcing that, after his victory, a Constituent Assembly would reexamine the question of the border with Poland. Denikin's attitude was the same as Kolchak's. Pilsudski's hope was that a Soviet Russia would be weaker than a republican Russia. His strategic aim was to establish a federation including Poland, Byelorussia, Lithuania, and the Ukraine, which would support all breakaway tendencies in the former Russian empire, from Finland to the Caucasus, thus solidifying a buffer region between Poland and Russia.
Lenin believed that the spark of the Russian revolution would ignite the fire of world revolution. In his view, conflict with Poland, a potential "Red bridge" to the West, was inevitable. None of the Bolsheviks doubted the necessity of "forcing the Polish bridge"; the only question was when and how to do it. Trotsky, who had said, 'The road to London and Paris goes through Calcutta," declared at the end of 1919: "When we have finished off Denikin, we will throw all the strength of our reserves against the Polish front."123 Poland interested the Soviet government less for its own sake than as a means of breaking through to Europe, above all to Germany.